It’s amazing how easily we can find ourselves in the same situations. That each time we finally think we have healed part of ourselves or gotten over a huge hurdle we end up landing face first into a world of problems we never even saw coming. I understand that life is ever-changing and that with every good day there will come a bad one somewhere down the road.

But then there are some days that completely stop you in your tracks and make you wonder if you are even in the right place at all.

Almost three years to the day, I ended an incredibly toxic and painful relationship that had really begun to take a toll on my life. Slowly but surely, I built myself back up and promised myself I would never find myself in the same situation. I never thought that I would need to worry about the situation switching forms; that the emotional and verbal abuse I endured in a romantic relationship would later find me in my career.

It’s not about not being able to handle criticism or not owning up to the fact that you know you could be doing better. It’s about giving someone your all to the point of your own physical and mental exhaustion and only getting reprimanded in return. I don’t agree with the idea that only a person is capable of waking up and deciding they don’t love you anymore; your job can easily do the same thing. One day you’re excited to go to work and the next thing you know, each day spent there becomes an unending game of walking on eggshells and hoping to slide under the radar long enough to get out unscathed.

We don’t always get to choose the paths we are taken down.

I thought that the emotional abuse would stop the day I left you; that I would no longer have to endure someone telling me I wasn’t trying hard enough, that I was a disappointment. I never would have fathomed that I would have just replaced you with a corporate voice whose words and power can cut even deeper than yours. Trying to shake the feeling of never being good enough is nearly impossible when you have someone constantly treating you as if you are not.

No matter how many things you do right, there will always be ten more things that you could have done better.

How can you be mad at someone for not doing something they were never told to do? As if my brain comes with a magical playbook of every possible want and desire you could ever have so I would have no excuse to ever make a mistake.

People make mistakes. But people also do great things, and if you didn’t spend so much time trying to find everything that has gone wrong, you would be so much more open to seeing all of the things that have been going right.

I will never understand people who enjoy putting people up on pedestals just to watch them fall back down. I don’t know if that makes you feel like the bigger person, but what I do know is that little will go the way you want it to if you only surround yourself with negativity. Making a change for the better is one of the most terrifying things you will ever have to do, especially when the risk is much more than losing a romantic partner. Sometimes you have to turn your life upside down to find out where you should be going and who you have been all along.

If you have made it out of this once before, you know you can do it again.

Creativity can strike at any moment — make sure you’re prepared for it.

To help you do that, we created a functional backpack with the everyday artist in mind. Whether you’re going to school, embarking on a new adventure, or simply just exploring the world around you, take your passion with you.

We hope that this backpack becomes a home for the stories you love, the stories you’ve told and the stories you’ve yet to tell.